Eclipse 3.1.1 translation packs available!

For the Eclipse 3.1.1 release, IBM Rational Software has contributed translations
for the Eclipse Project and for several subprojects of the Eclipse Tools
Project, the Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project and the Eclipse Test and
Performance Tools Platform Project.

The language packs are distributed as zips, which you can install by downloading
the zip file, unzipping into your Eclipse directory before starting Eclipse.
Please read the details below concerning the zip files and their contents
before using these translations.

For all the projects there are these types of language pack zip files:

NLpack2_FeatureOverlay  Contains the translations for
feature.properties files contained by the features2 defined
by the Eclipse component being translated. These files contain translations
for: Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Russian.

NLpackBidi_FeatureOverlay  Contains the translations
for feature.properties files contained by the features2 defined
by the Eclipse component being translated. These files contain translations
for: Arabic.

1 NL features are new features that did not exist for the
component prior to translation. They parallel the set of features defined
by the component and contain the NL fragments that contain the translations
for the plugins contained by the corresponding features. They contain
the translations for their own feature.properties files, not the translations
of the feature.properties files contained by the corresponding features.

2Feature overlays contain the translation for the feature.properties
files contained by the corresponding features. Here are the details as
to why these files exist.

These are the only translatable values inside an Eclipse
environment where the English strings are not in a plugin or plugin
fragment.

There is no such thing as a feature fragment like there is
a plugin fragment. The translations of strings in feature.properties
must reside in the feature directory right next to the English feature.properties
file in order to be found.

The feature directory names include the version number at
the end.

So do plugin directories but that is not a significant
fact in this discussion as the fragment support can handle the plugin
and fragment not having the exact same version as long as the fragment.xml
file has a proper match clause on its plugin references.

So, for the feature.properties translations which are created,
managed and ship separately from the component zip files to land in
the proper location to work properly when unzipped over an Eclipse install,
the directory names in two independently built zip files have to match
exactly.

There is no such problem for the rest of the translations
including our NL features since those are built as a whole.

The only way to get this right is to build the overlay files
against every release (even all the maintenance ones) that you want
them to work with and then re-release them for each one.

Prior to 3.1.1 all the translations (the well behaved majority
and the overlays) were included in the same zip file and rebuilt everything
for each release (even the maintenance releases). This is not required
for most of the translation volume, just the overlays so now, starting
with 3.1.1, they are separated. Going forward, these NLpack zip files
will work with all 3.1.x releases without a rebuild (not 3.1.0 since
there were too many NL fixes in 3.1.1). Each component will need to
continue to re-release the much smaller NLpack_FeatureOverlay zip files
with each maintenance release simply to align the directory names. Alternatively,
consumers of a component now have a small number of directory names
to fix up as they move from one maintenance release of a component to
another.

Finally, the various group overlay files must be separated
since they should be separately selectable and the contents would collide
by definition (identical directory structures) if in the same zip. The
three NLpack zip files could have been combined into one since they
would not collide with each as they have different NL fragment and NL
feature names but it was determined that consistency in packaging the
language groups separately would be best.

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